


Moving On

by greenfairy13



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angst, Drabble, I Don't Even Know, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-24
Updated: 2019-05-24
Packaged: 2020-03-14 14:25:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 549
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18949969
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/greenfairy13/pseuds/greenfairy13
Summary: Klaus is unable to move on. But there might be a reason why.





	Moving On

**Author's Note:**

> Soooo this is my first work (well, that's an exaggeration - it's really just a very short drabble) for this fandom. Typed it quickly on my phone cause it wouldn't leave my head.

Ghosts, they say, are unfinished business. They are by definition unable to move on. 

His entire life Klaus had been told to move on. When his father locked him up in the mausoleum and the dead came to torment him, he had been told to move on. What doesn’t kill you, makes you stronger, eh? 

When his brother died and they erected a monument to honor him, he had been told to move on. He just wasn’t supposed to copy his mistakes. A lesson learned, right?

When Dave, Dave the first person who truly loved him, who didn’t judge him, died right beneath his hands, warm, sticky blood coating his skin, making it itch and crawl, he had been told to move on. Love is for the weak, they say. Just another trick of your hormones, true? 

The thing about moving on - at least for Klaus - was how he was utterly unable to move on, even in the slightest. He wanted to, though. There was nothing he wanted more than to move on. 

But Klaus was stuck. He might live in the present, yet he was and would always be a piece of the past. It was his gift and tragedy how the past was his present and his present always dissolved before his eyes. 

The present was like water while the past was a solid rock.

Ghosts, they ceased to exist the moment life left their body. And they lived in the past. They were the past and Klaus was a part of them. Or maybe they were a part of him. He wasn’t quite sure.

When Klaus wasn’t wary, he couldn’t differ the dead from the living. They would drag him into their past, into their memories, and their thoughts became his thoughts. Their suffering, their pain, their joy, their love, their loss - it became a part of Klaus, and Klaus became a part of it, too. 

So Klaus lost his grip on reality as he slowly lost himself in the past of the others. They devoured the little boy - bit by bit and he drowned in memories that weren’t his. 

His father would say he was weak. And maybe he was. But what would you do in the middle of an ocean with no lifeboat in sight? 

Klaus had to build his own lifeboat. He needed an anchor to ground him in the present.

The first time he got high, he wasn’t high. Not like an ordinary junkie would be. He was sober. He arrived at the present while the voices, and the echoes, and the memories of hundreds of others faded until they were nothing but a distant buzz. The memory of a memory of a memory. As if you are standing between two mirrors, watching your reflection multiplied infinitely. 

But Klaus saw himself, too - for the very first time in years. It was a sharp picture and still fuzzy around the edges. He stared into eternity and eternity stared back - until he lost himself again. 

He was slipping, falling into the darkness at the end of infinity where all the pictures become blurred and fade into one. 

But as tainted, as flawed as it was, it was still a picture of the present. And Klaus clung to it - until he lost his footing again.


End file.
